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Overview

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

So opens the Gospel of John, an ancient text translated into almost every language, at once a compelling and beguiling metaphor for the Christian story of the Beginning. To further complicate matters, the words we read now are in any number of languages that would have been unknown or unrecognizable at the time of their composition. The gospel may have been originally dictated or written in Aramaic, but our only written source for the story is in Greek. Today, as your average American reader of the New Testament picks up his or her Bible off the shelf, the phrase as it appears has been translated from various linguistic intermediaries before its current manifestation in modern English. How to understand these words then, when so many other translators, languages, and cultures have exercised some level of influence on them?

Christian tradition is not unique in facing this problem. All religionsif they have global aspirationshave to change in order to spread their influence, and often language has been the most powerful agent thereof. Passwords to Paradise explores the effects that language difference and language conversion have wrought on the world's great faiths, spanning more than two thousand years. It is an original and intriguing perspective on the history of religion by a master linguistic historian.

Product Details

About the Author

Nicholas Ostler is the author of The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel, Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, and Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. He is chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (www.ogmios.org), a charity that supports the efforts of small communities worldwide to better know and use their languages. A scholar with a working knowledge of eighteen languages, Ostler lives in Hungerford, England.

Editorial Reviews

01/18/2016Ostler (The Last Lingua Franca) roams across several millennia of world history and delves into precise linguistic shifts looking for clues to how the "missionary religions" of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam have been affected by the new language communities they entered. Paradoxes arise when "diversity of expression" meets "unity of revelation," Ostler writes, then demonstrates exhaustively how these three religions may have been altered not only by the imperfect art of translation but by their social, political, and military contexts. The growth of Mahayana ideas as Buddhism moved north, the splintering of eastern Orthodox churches into separate linguistic communities, and the spread of Christianity into a new continent with multiple native languages are only a few of the topics Ostler investigates. While his treatment is generally accessible, his enthusiastic, wide-ranging inquiries sometimes venture far from his thesis, and into abstruse detail. Stating his religious unbelief at the outset, Ostler is largely even-handed, though not without some pointed wit at expense of adherents. Quite noticeable is the contrast between his love of languages and his attitudes toward organized religion, with religion coming across as more grist for the mill of his intellectual curiosity. For those fascinated by linguistic transitions, this impressive study is a feast. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Impressively vast in scope and content." Kirkus Reviews

"For those fascinated by linguistic transitions, this impressive study is a feast." Publishers Weekly

"Ostler's extensive research and well-drawn conclusions . . . make this an intriguing read." Shelf Awareness

“Lucid, erudite and elegant.” The New York Times Book Review on AD INFINITUM

“Informative and fascinating . . . Ostler's treatment of Latin as a mother to the supple vernacular tongues we call Romance languages is particularly good, and his evaluation of the Renaissance humanists and the way in which they may have loved Latin to death is provocative.” Los Angeles Times on AD INFINITUM

“What a fascinating book . . . highlights the many currents that change language, that change peoples and nations. Told with tenderness, packed with facts, quotations, jests and illustrations, this is a book that earns the great story it tells.” Philadelphia Inquirer on AD INFINITUM

From the Publisher

03/01/2016The central conceit of independent scholar Ostler's (The Last Lingua Franca) latest work is that imported and nuanced phrases, similar to archaeological finds, populate translated liturgical and scriptural texts of later missionized groups (primarily Buddhist and Christian, and secondarily Islamic), offering insights into religious transformation. Specifically, translational discrepancies across language groups demonstrate how ethnic, geographic, and historical forces impacted variation in religious belief and practice. For example, Slavic liturgies use kristos for cross, whose roots derive from the Latin crux, rather than the Greek stauros. This leads Ostler to conjecture that Irish monks are responsible for the conversion of the Slavs, not Byzantine Greeks. He suggests that Buddhism was profoundly altered by its movement into China, where Chinese translations undercut the authority of Sanskrit and, more important, Indian-generated traditions. Impressive in scope, albeit a tad dry, this is more for the linguistic historian or textual specialist than the general religion reader. VERDICT An intriguing read for the ardent comparative religionist.—Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh

Library Journal

2015-12-08The effects of religion on language are well-known; what about the effects of language on religion? It is toward this question that Ostler (The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel, 2010, etc.) turns his formidable capabilities as a linguist and historian. To answer this question, the author, the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, looks at what he deems the three great missionary religions of world history: Buddhism, Christianity, and, to a lesser extent, Islam. In the cases of Buddhism and Christianity, in encounters with new linguistic communities, the religions themselves changed in various ways to accommodate the new formats of communication. Even if core beliefs remained the same, geographic and ethnic differences would occur, spurred on by language. Islam was different in that it demanded the authority of Arabic, and so even in new linguistic communities, the Quran remained the same text; new converts were made to adopt Arabic, at least for the purposes of religion. Ostler provides an interesting discussion of Buddhism's movement into China, demonstrating how the Chinese significantly added to the religion's tradition and canon. He also follows the epic story of Christianity's migration through nations speaking Greek, then Latin, then the tongues of Northern Europe, of Eastern Europe, and eventually the languages of South America and elsewhere. He notes that everywhere Christianity went, new versions of it sprang up or new linguistic traditions were added. The author concludes that, indeed, language has had deep influence on the world's religions. However, "the languages of the ancient world have died or changed beyond recognition, but many of the revealed faiths of the Axial Age [800-200 B.C.E.] are still with us. Some languages indeed…owe most of their continued existence to the religions they serve." The author's brilliance is on display throughout the book, and it makes for an intriguing, if at times bewildering, read. Impressively vast in scope and content, Ostler's work is most accessible to fellow specialists but should intrigue dedicated readers as well.